You might think that Valve is one of the companies "exiting the Windows market". Was looking forward to software and games for the PC. SteamOS if need be, but on PC! What about all of the "AAA games coming to SteamOS"? I guess Valve knows what its doing, just have to wait.

2nd_floor wrote on Sep 25, 2013, 22:40:But like you're saying, Valve may not be after the PC user base.

Valve are after anyone and everyone they can convince to become their (ongoing) customer on Steam.

But they already have the PC user base, and my guess is that PC people will not be interested in switching to the living room. SteamOS may do well with PC gamers on their desktops, but to support the living room initiative of hardware, new customers will need to be found or converted from Xbox and PS. And is this possible in the numbers that Valve will need and game developers will want to see before writing their games for SteamOS. Who knows, we'll see.

Beamer wrote on Sep 25, 2013, 22:20:Man, so many people sitting here saying "I'd never use this" or "I already plug my TV in" or whatever.

Duh. This isn't for you. You already spend tons of cash on Steam. This is for people that don't.

I think you're right maybe. Valve want to draw people away from Xbox and PS. But is this realistic? Can they really compete against the multi billion dollar budgets of Microsoft and Sony and maybe even Nintendo? Anyone know how Ouya is doing?

I wonder how many people Big Picture Mode got using it, from PC. But like you're saying, Valve may not be after the PC user base.

But Valve is starting from near scratch with their console and OS. Are people really going to switch from Xbox/Kinect and PS to use Steam? Risky risky stuff I think.

The only difference this new Steam hardware and software is maybe, is that its an "open, upgradable" PC/console (whichever you want to call it), controller or mouse and keyboard, for the living room. And I guess this idea doesnt exist in the market yet, much anyway.

2nd_floor wrote on Sep 24, 2013, 11:40:Today developers are pulling away from Windows even! The desktop for gaming is somewhat uncertain.

I'm sorry but this is uninformed nonsense. Perhaps you should look at the balance sheets of major gaming corporations. There is too much money to be made in the PC space.

.I believe there is money to be made on PC too, but some companies are not making games period for PC, or not at full PC quality. GTA V, Destiny, Rage, Crysis 2,3. And some are making awesome PC games like Far Cry 3, Skyrim and Total War 2:Rome. But I think 5+ years ago, all companies were doing the PC. Not even actually: some Halo games were not released for PC in the early 2000s.

Why is GTA V not on PC (yet)? For sure it will sell on PC, why have they not announced or released it yet?

I don't know the finances of game developers, but I can see in the quality of the game, and sometimes no game at all for PC, that developers are putting more effort into the consoles than PC. Some, not all, but enough to think that something has changed. Hopefully with this next generation of consoles with more power, we will get high quality games on PC again. But why are some games not even coming out yet for PC?

So Valve is going to take on Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for the living room. To my knowledge this is a big risk. Microsoft and Sony loose billions of dollars ($8 bn combined) keeping their consoles in the living room, and because they have huge other businesses/products, they can afford this. Valve is hoping to take customers away from Xbox, PS and Wii? All of the games already come out for Xbox and PS, except upcoming Valve games maybe). I think risky!

Valve is hoping Steam alone can compete with Xbox and PS, and Steam until today does not run games as an OS. Do they have anything else they can throw at Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo? If they can get 10s and 10s of developers writing games for SteamOS/Linux, maybe they'll have something to go on. Today developers are pulling away from Windows even! The desktop for gaming is somewhat uncertain.

Maybe they will pull off what Google/Android did in the mobile market, but risky I think.

I would stick to the desktop maybe, and Linux on the desktop might do well. Is Valve hoping to turn desktop gamers into living room ones? Risky stuff I think.

No mention of whether SteamOS will be open source. All this talk of Linux and "openness", yet nothing as far as source code. If they make any changes to the kernel or any other GPL code, they will have to release source code if requested.

There is also Ouya, which is Android, and Android is pretty big today.

Gadzooks wrote on Sep 17, 2013, 15:07:Some of the best Diablo news since the game came out.

Yeah.

I may buy this game one day yet. There's still a major obstacle though. I never thought I'd say this, but can I have the console version of the game on PC? You know, the one that doesn't need an always online connection???

My thoughts too. I have not used the RMAH so I don't know why people cheer its shutdown (why was it bad?). The problem with Diablo III for me is the online requirement.

I think gaming is not only about Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux anymore, but now the idea of the desktop computer itself, no matter what OS is on it, is now at risk. The living room is I think getting more and more popular. I can't imagine a time where desktop/enthusiast PCs are not common for gaming, but are sales and stats not showing the decline of the desktop for gaming, vs. whatever device in the living room?

Does anybody know, if somebody were to tune and optimize the Linux kernel and X Windows and even some of the other software (not drivers for now), what kind of performance we might get out of "gaming distribution"? Or is this what Sony has done with FreeBSD and the PS?

I know that optimizing graphics drivers can make a big difference in games. Is it worthwhile to optimize the kernel and other software also?

2nd_floor wrote on Sep 12, 2013, 12:12:Has WoW maybe been the most successful game ever, both in terms of number of players and profits?

I would imagine it has to be by far. If there is anything close I can't magine what it would be. I mean yeah, they have high costs too, lots of employees and servers, but still. Now if you want to go for highest percentage return, Minecraft probably wins that.

Although if you compare "game franchises" such as Halo and Grand TheftAuto where you have 4+ Halo games and maybe 10 GTA games, and COD, the Warcraft franchise as a whole, maybe gets some competition.

I think its safe to say, "the damage is already well done", that they made plenty of money from the game in the maybe 10 years it lived. Has WoW maybe been the most successful game ever, both in terms of number of players and profits?

2nd_floor wrote on Sep 10, 2013, 23:51:How big is the Skyrim map vs. this leaked map? This one seems small. Maybe the city just looks small because of the wilderness area and smaller towns/areas behind it. Is GTA IV bigger or small or same as this leaked shot?

Anybody know why Rockstar is making GTA V for X360/PS3 instead of Xbone and PS4, which will be able to produce much better quality and larger everything in the game?

And as to why launch on 360 & PS3 as contra One / PS4? It's a $250M game, that's why.

And no, there is no direct backwards compatibility on these consoles. Different architecture, different instruction set on the CPU. Nor would emulation be possible since there's not enough power on even modern day PC's to pull it off in realtime.

Are you sure GTA IV is to scale? San Andreas was bigger than GTA IV? No way I would guess!! But that guess is only based on that GTA IV came out after San Andreas and games usually get bigger in time I think.

2nd_floor wrote on Sep 10, 2013, 23:51:How big is the Skyrim map vs. this leaked map? This one seems small. Maybe the city just looks small because of the wilderness area and smaller towns/areas behind it. Is GTA IV bigger or small or same as this leaked shot?

Anybody know why Rockstar is making GTA V for X360/PS3 instead of Xbone and PS4, which will be able to produce much better quality and larger everything in the game?

And as to why launch on 360 & PS3 as contra One / PS4? It's a $250M game, that's why.

And no, there is no direct backwards compatibility on these consoles. Different architecture, different instruction set on the CPU. Nor would emulation be possible since there's not enough power on even modern day PC's to pull it off in realtime.

Holy crap!! If those maps are all properly to scale, holy crap! People said Skyrim was huge! You mean $250M spent on a game needs a large user base, and Xbone and PS4 are not guaranteeing enough sales to make it worth it? You have to think that these new consoles willsell though. Or are console sales decreasing these days?

That's what I thought maybe, that they started on it 3 years ago let's say, and to change it now to use next-gen consoles would mean a re-working of lots of the game.

I looked at the map if GTA IV, and this GTA V will be quite a bit larger I think overall, but the urban area maybe slightly smaller, not much though I think. The vast wilderness could be a fun change from the urban areas of past GTAs. Please for PC, please!

How big is the Skyrim map vs. this leaked map? This one seems small. Maybe the city just looks small because of the wilderness area and smaller towns/areas behind it. Is GTA IV bigger or small or same as this leaked shot?

Anybody know why Rockstar is making GTA V for X360/PS3 instead of Xbone and PS4, which will be able to produce much better quality and larger everything in the game?

Sho wrote on Aug 28, 2013, 15:06:It sounds odd, but I may actually be happy Valve waited until they did with their Linux push - if they had done it back in 2005, the free driver situation on Linux at the time was much, much worse. Intel wasn't doing nearly as much work on the free driver stack back then and likely wouldn't have been available as partner yet - and their cooperation now is doing a lot to improve the Mesa OpenGL implementation and their drivers. Basically, the situation right now allows Valve and Steam to get a lot more done on the platform than back in 2005, which helps keeping momentum up, which helps engaging people's attention span, all that stuff.

Digital distribution is a factor too - that wasn't nearly as big yet back in 2005, and getting a Linux retail games business going would have been so much harder (Loki and others failed).

It would have taken a lot to bring Steam and its functioning to Linux maybe, but look at how big Ubuntu was. Imagine Ubuntu and a year after Valve's , Blizzard's games onUbuntu. It could have added huge things to Linux.

True with digital distribution, that probably makes Linux games much easier to deploy to the masses.

It's easy to ask for a game on Linux, but maybe there is a lot more behind the scenes to actually getting it out. You could be right that the timing is now right for Linux for games, and the necessary factors, drivers and digital distr., to do it are all coming together like they would not have in the 1990s and even early-mid 2000s.